7. The Directional Flow of God’s perfect Blessing
“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:27-28)
What the Original Blessing implies
In this account of God’s original Blessing, I see several things implied and offer them for your prayerful consideration:
1. The directional flow (or polarity) of the energy that connects us to our God and gives life to our relationship with Him is a one way flow. That flow produces the supernatural Fruit in human lives that only comes from God. That flow must be protected and maintained intact. The Truth is that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the one and only Source of all that is real, true and good. He initiates everything. So the energy flow always comes from Him to us. 100% of what God’s Creation needs in order to be maintained, sustained and protected must come from Him. All life, ability and provision flows from Him, outward to His Creation, including us. All that we are and have and are able to do comes to us only from God – 100%. And 0% of that comes from created things, including ourselves. Some of God’s creatures are gifted with the ability to be imaginative and creative; but God alone is The Creator that causes things to be…out of nothingness.
2. So the perfect Blessing that God imparted to the human race in Genesis 1:28 is much more than a mere wish or hope on His part that we would prosper and succeed. He actually transmitted His power to fulfill that Blessing in us and through us by His living creative Word! The all-powerful Word Himself, who contains the Fullness of God’s creative Authority and Ability is the Blessing that God bestowed upon us. And once God gave His Word to be our empowering Blessing, the Blessing remains with us and for us, always. Our perfect God’s perfect Word will never change or be revoked. It stands forever, true and firm, no matter what may happen in our time and space dimension.
3. Thus God’s Blessing is always available to those who believe, receive and obey God’s Word and walk before Him on this basis of 100% rest in and dependence upon, God. Our Creator has given us everything we will ever need but we must always look to Him alone in order to receive it. We will receive nothing that is real, true or good from any other source. There is no other source but God. This is what the first commandment in Exodus 20:2-6 reveals and requires.
4. God’s Word-Blessing contains the Fullness of God within Himself (Colossians 1:18-20). Everything we will ever need to fulfill our God-given nature, identity, purpose and destiny as God’s image and likeness can only come to us from Him (John 1:1-3). There is no other real source, no other god. People who believe we can draw from a variety of alternate sources are deluded by the same demonic lie that deceived Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3).
5. So the directional flow of the energy of God’s Blessing is one-way. It originates in God and proceeds toward us and is imparted to us by and through His Word. We must receive everything – 100%, from God’s Word in order to be the true living image and likeness of God. There is nothing that creatures can originate or supply or give to God or anything else.
6. The Word of God is God’s perfect image and likeness. And we are designed and destined to be the Word’s perfect image and likeness – living mirrors – focused always on receiving and living according to what we receive from God’s living Word. This is what the written Word reveals and demands of us. We must acknowledge God for who and what He really is, receiving everything from His Word and reflecting His Word back to Him and to those around us. Whatever we are or have or do truly originates in God’s Word and is imparted to us by Him. So our attitude and response to the Word of God is all-important. It will determine whether or not we are truly operating at the image-and-likeness-of-God level, or not.
7. It is our purpose and privilege to be like God’s Mirrors, reflecting back to God, what He first gives to us through His Word. If we seek provision, protection and well being from other imaginary sources, we cannot reflect God. To that degree we fail to fulfill our true nature and purpose as humans. Any activity done in that alien manner is ‘Head-less’ and therefore, ‘dead’. And God will not accept it. Such dead works will never pass His Judgment. God will always be asking: “How much of My Son (Word) is in this?”
8. Disciples of the Word must be trained to remain perpetually focused on their Master, the Word. This is what is meant when the Word summons us and says: “Follow Me!” He trains His disciples to reflect back to Him continually what He first imparts to them (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Our faith hope, love and trust in God require that we receive everything from our Master alone. God is perfection personified. And He sends His perfect blessing through His perfect Word. Our job is to receive the Word who is The Blessing, and draw everything we need from Him and reflect our exclusive faith, hope and trust back to God with the same perfection with which He has first blessed us. The fallen human race must repent of looking to other sources and worshipping false gods. Only God’s living Word can empower and supply us. Only by Him can we thrive, succeed, prosper and live according to God’s absolute Lordship and dominion over Creation. And now we know that this awesome Word’s Name is, ‘Messiah Yeshua’.
9. So even after our first parents fell into Sin and Death, Scripture reveals that God never revoked His Blessing. The humans fell into a satanic Sin-corrupted state and destroyed their original union with God. They allowed the serpent to drag them into his own profound spiritual Darkness and state of living death (Genesis 3). Nevertheless, God sent His Word (the Blessing) to seek after them so that He could cover their spiritual nakedness and restore them and lead them back into Life and fellowship and righteousness before God. God in His infinite, eternal Perfection is not upset or disgruntled or diminished in any way, by the evil committed by any of His creatures. Evil does not affect Him in the way it affects us. Yes, He grieves to see parts of His beautiful Creation damaged or destroyed. And yes, the perfect balance of His Perfect order and justice are disturbed…but none of these things can change God’s nature or purpose. So our evil does not deter or overcome Him and His purposes. He always responds out of His eternal Perfection…and overcomes any evil with His infinite, eternal Good! So the Blessing of God will always respond positively to what is negative; He will put in what is missing, straighten what is crooked, give life to what is dead and heal what is sick or maimed (See Isaiah 61; Lk. 7:18-23). He will supply whatever we need to fulfill our God-given purpose and destiny. Without Him to supply us, we are nothing and can do and have nothing. So unless we acknowledge this and set ourselves to receive everything from Him, we disobey God and are not able to be what we are created to be (Isaiah 6:8-13; 55:8-11; Matthew 12:46-50; 13:10-17; John 5:19, 30). But in this life, He is always here to be to us whatever we need…as long as we come to Him on His terms…according to the Reality and Truth He has created.
10. If we respond to God’s Blessing (the perfect Word who is our Shepherd, Provider and Protector) by repenting, we begin to live in union with God and come back into the position necessary to receive The Blessing and benefit from His Fullness…all the way across the finish line of our life in this fallen world. If we don’t repent during our space and time life, we will continue to worship and put our faith in false gods. And if we enter eternity clinging to some false god that does not even exist…we will spend eternity with nothing but regret and the agonizing frustration of never being able to be and do what we are truly created to be and do…and that will lead to an eternal emptiness that is worse than death and annihilation (See Matthew 8:5-13).
11. Because God, in His perfection, never changes, what He ordained in the beginning will be perfectly fulfilled in the end…through those that repent and begin to obey and align themselves with the Word of God. That is why He sent His Word after us to make sure we would be able to change (repent) and come back to Him and live with Him and from Him as God has always intended. In Heaven God already is and has whatever we will need here on Earth. The polarity or energy direction must therefore always flow from God in eternity…Earthward and Manward…into time and space, and never the other way around.
12. God could have enjoyed His Perfection perfectly…within Himself. But God is by nature, Perfect Love. Love gives of Himself; He shares Himself with others. That’s why He shares His Perfection and Glory with His intended image and likeness…His beloved humans. So His intention to overcome the evil into which we fell, and to restore us, will not change. The Word is single-minded; He is here to recover His image and likeness with whom He intends to share His Eternal Inheritance, Joy, Rest, Authority and Glory. We never have to doubt God’s Perfection or His eternal changelessness and constancy. That’s why we can and must always trust Him with an airtight faith. When we know Him as He is, we never have to fear that He has or will change His mind or that He will regard us in any other way, but in the way of True, Perfect, Undying Love. So even when He has to discipline, correct, cleanse and prune us, we can know that He isn’t doing it to harm or torture us. He does it because He is restoring us to His image and likeness, which is Eternal Perfection. That’s how much God loves His Creation!
“When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your Kingdom come. Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” (Matthew 6:5-10)
Because 100% of the polarity of the energy flow of our relationship with God is always from God, to us, we can see that through His Word, God is the only true Source. Everything real, true and good always originates with Him and flows to us. He must supply everything and protect and lead us at all times. And we must accurately reflect this truth back to Him by receiving all things from Him and following His leading. So by faithful obedience to the Authority of God’s Word, we prove to be the Word’s image and likeness disciples, even amid the unbelieving, rebellious, demon-possessed Sin-corrupted world that is still operating all around us.
Notice how different the actual practices of most people in this fallen world are from what we’ve listed above. They ignore or try to change God’s written Word which reveal His living Word. Thus they remain deliberately ignorant of and oblivious to, the Reality of God’s living Word. In that ignorance of what God reveals, they are rejecting the Salvation God sent and remain oblivious to His warnings. Thus they continue to violate His commandments.
Even those of us who identify ourselves as ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’, who claim to believe and serve the God of the Bible, regularly look to and depend upon a variety of alien sources. We claim to put our faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but we also trust in a variety of other, created things in addition to Him. We often depend on ourselves and on others like us. Some of us look to created charismatic personalities, world leaders, governments, organizations and man-made economies. We look to creatures to give us what we think we need and unwittingly give the message that our God is not enough to meet all of our needs, all of the time. So we place our hopes are in our careers and in governments, educational achievements, businesses, university degrees, official titles, financial investments and self-serving relationships with other Sin-corrupted, flesh-driven people.
Are not these things false, man-made gods just as much as the false man-made gods of organized world religions? Viewed in terms of energy polarity, it is easy to see that most of the world’s faith-polarity does not center exclusively on the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and His promised Messiah. Instead, human energy scatters in various directions and is thus divided among a variety of ‘gods.’ Of course that grossly violates what the real God actually commands:
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” (Exodus 20:2-6)
“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 Emphasis added.)
Pay attention to and ponder what the Holy Spirit inspired Moses to write down as a warning to His Chosen People. They were commanded to remain faithful to the living God as the Torah of Moses revealed Him to them. The Torah reveals the living Word of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is the Word that brought them into an everlasting Blood Covenant with God! Israel was to remain faithful to that God…the God their fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob knew, before anything was ever written down! They were to remain faithful to the living Word of God, just as He revealed Himself through the revelation Moses wrote down for His Exodus generation…and for all generations to come all across the world:
“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you!” (Deuteronomy 13:1-5 Emphasis added.)
Notice the gravity of this warning. God is telling His people not to fall for the same lie that Eve fell for in the Garden…the lie she persuaded Adam to swallow as well. That lie decapitated the entire human race! That’s why God sent His Word to reveal Himself again to the fathers of the faith. And He commissioned Moses to record that revelation so that we would not have to guess about God or what He’s like or what He requires of us. God made sure it was written down in human words we could all understand. The salvation of the entire human race demands that we be restored to the Word’s image and likeness! That’s why God warns against anyone that will allow the Serpent access…and enable the Serpent to manipulate him or her and speak his lies through them. If that happens, the Serpent will be able to continue to ‘decapitate’ unsuspecting human beings from their True Head…God’s living Word!
So after God gave His revelation through Moses…He warned the people that any prophet, or teacher or religion and theology that would come after this Torah revelation had been given and deviated from it throughout the ages of human history…must be disregarded. God’s people are to make sure that anything that comes later, will match and remain perfectly aligned with and fulfill…the Torah revelation that came before. Torah reveals what God revealed of Himself to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. Nothing can be added that is alien and that fails to confirm, fulfill, accurately unpack and authentically explain what came before. Nothing can be taken away from that revelation, or added that essentially changes or contradicts it. And if subsequent leaders and teachers and prophets and teachings come along later and deny or contradict or essentially alter what Moses was inspired to write about God’s living Word…the damage they do will be deadly to the human race. So a death penalty is required for that offense because it dares try to prevent the Salvation of the human race. This is how serious God was, and is, and always will be, about how the human race is to respond to His living Word…and to the written Word that reveals and explains Him.
But based on the number of ‘gods’ that men actually do believe in and worship and serve, and based on how many ‘prophets’, ‘teachers’, and ‘gurus’ did direct the minds and hearts of mankind away from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and His Word…we can see that the closer the era of The Last Days gets to us…the more the entire world is going to be in for a tremendous shock when God’s Day of Reckoning finally arrives.
God’s Expectations and Requirements
Based on what we’ve learned so far, through the writings of Moses, God’s expectations and requirements can be summed up in the following:
1. There is only one living God, only one real Creator and Source for whatever is real, true and good in the created universe. He designed and created us humans to be His image and likeness. Through His Word, and His Word’s true disciples, He intends to demonstrate and prove His wisdom, integrity and perfection primarily to His angelic hosts, both the rebellious demonic powers of Darkness (Ephesians, 3:10) and the obedient heavenly hosts, and secondarily to His unbelieving, disobedient human creation, so that He can draw them back to His Word who has been sent to save them (Matthew. 5:14-20; 10; John 3:16-21).
2. We disciples must look to our one God and to Him alone for 100% of what we are, what we will ever have, and what we will ever be able to do. Apart from Him, we are helpless, hopelessly bankrupt dust. But with Him, as long as we’re living and drawing everything from His living Word and Holy Spirit, all things are possible (Isaiah 66:1-2; Matthew. 17:20; 19:26; John. 15)
3. As soon as we divide and scatter our focus to sources other than the true, living God, we scatter our faith, hope, love and expectation in all directions. That’s when we fall into idolatry and fall far short of what true humanity is. And we violate God’s perfect standards of Truth, Reality, Righteousness and Justice. Only the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob can supply what we need. He is the one who connects us with the right people and provides the created things and resources that we use in daily life. He provides the created things and resources and assistance we need in order to survive and thrive. Created things are only instruments in His hand. But only He provides them for us. Thus we dare not confuse the issue by making up an array of false gods that are actually part of God’s Creation. If we idolize such things, we deviate from God’s Original Creation and Blessing and Revelation and our ‘gods’ will be mere products of our fallen, Sin-corrupted imaginations, hopes and sense of self-interest. That will be a deadly blunder. As we approach the Last Days prophesied in the last book of the Bible, Revelation, God warns us that at the end…it will be just as He said it would be, in the beginning. So what God spoke forth in the beginning…just as He revealed it in Genesis and Exodus…He will perfectly validate, fulfill and bring to pass…when the Last Days era that is covered in the Book of Revelation reaches its final conclusion.
4. Everything we are and have and use and do in our lives are gifts from the one and only God. He requires us to acknowledge this and to reflect it back out as God’s Truth. There is no other source but His living Word. The Word is pre-eminent over all. He is our ALL in all things. And He is the Master that we are all called to ‘follow’.
5. This is the very ‘narrow gate’ that Yeshua spoke of in Matthew 7:13-14. We can only enter the Kingdom of Heaven through God’s living Word. He is our Original Blessing that contains everything Father gave us…everything we will ever be or have or do is given to us by Him. Yeshua Himself is the living Word of God. So He is ‘The Narrow Gate’ and ‘The Narrow Way’ that will impart to us His eternal Life and Everlasting Inheritance (Isaiah 9;1-7; 53; 61; John 14:3-6; ).
6. Many people in this world live lives of sorrow, desolation, shame, anxiety and horrible frustration and disappointment. Because they do not know the real God and His True, Eternal, Living Word, they feel trapped and hopeless beyond description. That is the result of the Serpent’s lies, and his never-ending efforts to keep the world blinded to and ignorant of God’s Word. As long as he can erase the Word and His Salvation and full Restoration from our minds and hearts, as long as he succeeds in getting us to believe his lies, and gets us to believe and worship the false gods and false hopes behind which he hides himself…the Serpent can keep us trapped within his deadly coils. But as soon as the Truth and Light of God’s Word and Spirit are able to pierce, penetrate and impregnate our innermost being with His Life-giving Reality and Love and Salvation…we who were once dead can suddenly come back to life (See Ezek. 37). And our grief and mourning will turn into Joy and Peace and Sabbath Rest! This is the Fruit of the Living Word of the Living God. This Living Word is Yeshua the Messiah of Israel. This is what He does…for anyone…that will believe and repent of ignoring and rejecting and replacing Him. When He is allowed to come into them as Lord, Owner and Master…then the former Darkness turns into His Eternal Light, and our tears turn into joy and freedom and dancing.
7. Walking and staying on that narrow path that leads to Eternal Life is what true disciples must be trained and equipped to do, even in unspeakably difficult, Serpent-induced circumstances. Disciples live with, and from, their Master day and night. They must know Him intimately if they’re going to flourish, heal and become His image and likeness. Then they can live by the Power of God’s Holy Spirit, just as their Master lived when He walked the Earth, regardless of what the powers of Darkness may try to do to deceive them. They become His image and likeness in every way and on every level…when they learn to depend on Him and receive everything from Him, all the time.
8. The world system, and our own fallen flesh, and the demonic powers of Darkness work together to distract, confuse and cause us to stray from the narrow path that our God has set before us. The broad gate and broad path that lead many to destruction serve as the Serpent’s ‘alternate routes’ that lead to Death. The demonic powers of Darkness continually try to get us to take our eyes off of God’s Path…and follow something else. If they succeed, we lose our focus and our Master loses His human image and likeness. Then the energy of our faith responses scatters in all directions and we become disoriented and eventually disconnected from the one true God and His Life. Our faith and focus must remain concentrated and focused on Yeshua the Messiah, as He is revealed in the Torah and the rest of the Scriptures. Our focus on Him must resemble an intense, steel-penetrating laser beam. We must not allow anything to get our eyes off of our Master. Nothing must be allowed to dissipate and scatter our energies in dead-end directions. We must not allow ourselves to be misled by our enemies and wander off the Path…and onto the demonic ‘mine fields. If we do, we will quickly lose our way (John 3:17-21) and everything else we thought we had.
9. But if we keep the focus of faithful obedience trained exclusively on that narrow path of undying faithfulness and obedience to our one true God and His Word, we will remain safely fixed and grounded upon, and loyal to, the Path that God has set before us…the Path that leads to Eternal Life.
10. God has given us His own Holy Spirit to empower, teach, correct, prune, train and maintain us. He is with us to make God’s living Word, real, and active and alive and fruitful in us and for us and through us. He will take us all the way across the Finish Line. He will enable us to stand and hold our God-given ground. And He will keep us safely fixed upon and united to our Master Yeshua, the living Word of God, to the very end and on into Eternity. Why? This will happen because God never changes. And when we repent and learn to become His image and likeness, His Perfection can become our Eternal Covering and Eternal Treasure.